Have You Suffered More than Christ

If you have not suffered as much as Christ had when He died for us, then you have not suffered to be able to say Christ would not want you to suffer through any difficulty. Notice too that Christ died for us while we were still in our sin.

We do not bail out of marriages just because our spouse is not acting right. We go to prayer and even fasting to allow God to work in our lives.

I have heard people say, "God wouldn't want me to go through that."

My answer: "If God didn't want you to go through something it would not cross your path."

So often we make choices in our lives that bring severe consequences and then we want to escape them rather than endure and resolve what we created. Resolving our mess ups can only be done correctly if we seek Christ for His solutions.

James 1:2-11 "2 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him.
6 But he must ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that man ought not to expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
8 being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
9 But the brother of humble circumstances is to glory in his high position;
10 and the rich man is to glory in his humiliation, because like flowering grass he will pass away.
11 For the sun rises with a scorching wind and withers the grass; and its flower falls off and the beauty of its appearance is destroyed; so too the rich man in the midst of his pursuits will fade away."

The Sins Do Not Have to Dominate the Marriage

I was asked a question by a dear sister in the Lord about a woman who trapped a man into marrying her by getting pregnant by him before they were married, causing them to decide to get married. I thought this was a good question and wanted to place it here for others to see.

Here is my answer below:

Our actions have consequences. When we make a promise at the altar, that is the binding promise God uses to make two people into one, He makes them one. The man now is responsible to see to it that the woman he got pregnant is treated with dignity as his wife. And, the women hopefully will be contrite about trapping the man. However, keep in mind the man could not have been trapped if he acted like an honorable man and chose not to sleep with someone who was not his wife.

The woman and the man must now live with their consequences. So many people think these situations are forever, they are not. A man and woman can grow, repent and have a great marriage, if at least one of them turns to Christ for forgiveness and resolves to be the spouse God commanded in His Word. Hopefully both will repent.

These are not hopeless situations, they are foolish in the beginning but God can fix them. Sadly so many people think only in the here and now rather repenting and changing their attitude which leads to a change of behavior.
Divorce is not the answer, a change of heart toward God leading to a change in behavior is the answer.
WE all do foolish things when we are young, but we can grow out of those mentalities to become what God meant for us to be.